Reappreciating Applied Imagination

Hello again Humantific readers. Inspired by a reoccurring question seen in one of the LinkedIn Design Thinking discussion groups regarding “SCAMPER” we decided to make this the focus of this week’s post. Since many of our readers/clients are innovation initiative leaders we thought it might be useful to you if we share a somewhat lost story regarding this thinking related subject.

At Humantific we recognize SCAMPER as a basic idea prompting technique, (not a method) with a long history that seems to be not well understood in some communities of practice today.

SCAMPER originates in the Applied Creativity community (*1), not the design or design thinking communities. For those who might not know these are two very different communities of knowledge…with very different timelines, heroes, orientation to challenges and methodology histories. While many parallels exist, one is certainly not interchangeable with the other…….

The Edison Effect

It might come as a surprise to some unfamiliar with Osborn’s work or that of the various other United States based CPS/Applied Creavity pioneers but the early orientation of this community can be described as significantly influenced by the Edison Effect….as in Thomas Edison (1847-1931). Without getting into the later criticism leveled at Edison we can acknowledge for the purposes of this post that he was a prolific, highly influential legendary American Inventor…..

Skill-Building Workshops Coming Soon!

Are your teams burning valuable resources working on the wrong set of challenges? Are you making giant assumptions regarding what the challenges are? Are hidden assumptions embedded in the methods you are using?

Today, organizational leaders in all industries are faced with making sense of and prioritizing a vast landscape of challenges facing their organizations. In a continuously changing world, those challenges can range from mega to mini, from long standing to real-time emergent.

The ability to rapidly defuzz and order challenges visually in a way that is sharable has already become a key innovation leadership skill of the 21st century. At Humantific we call this strategic sensemaking skill, Upstream Challenge Framing.

What makes it different from product, software, service and experience related framing is that this is upstream from any preconceived notions of what the challenges and solution paths might be. In Upstream Challenge Framing, we open the aperture to the possibility that you might not fully understand what the challenges facing you actually are.

At the very least, you probably do not fully understand the challenge context. With openness of mind, we set out to defuzz, order and construct a visual map of the challenges that shows, often for the first time, the connections between challenges, from broad to narrow.

Before you go boil the ocean, or assume you just need yet another software tweak sprint let’s understand the challenge context. Turning the lights on in challenge landscapes is the purpose of Upstream Challenge Framing. Mastering this framing skill is not always a walk in the park, but its value-add is well worth the effort.

This is a real-time strategic framing skill that makes most sense to organizational leaders engaged upstream from run-of-the-mill (“Agile-like”) project briefs. This skill will be most valuable to leaders who have already figured out that “Agile” is assumption-based, weak on strategic framing and not a silver bullet. This session will provide an introduction to Upstream Challenge Framing. Our advanced Humantific Academy workshops provide advanced skill building.

If you have interest in attending one of these upcoming sessions in one of these cities feel free to let us know. Attendance will be limited.

Email: programs (at) humantific (dot) com

Humantific Skill-Building

We receive many requests for training in Humantific skills. In this regard, some years ago we created Humantific Academy inside which is the Complexity Navigation Program containing three interconnecting streams of innovation leadership skill; Strategic CoCreation, Design Research and Visual SenseMaking. These are skills geared for organizational leaders facing continuous change and rising complexity in their marketplaces. Unlike “Agile” these are skills geared for business contexts where the challenges are fuzzy, complex requiring significant unpacking and inclusive multi-disciplinary stakeholder involvement. These are skills geared towards the creation of inclusive innovation cultures. For more info send us an email.

Complexity Navigation in Spain

Modeling today and the tomorrow. We had a great week in Spain working with Felix Lozano and his team at TeamLabs an experimental university in Madrid and Barcelona for “teampreneurs”. Working on a joint executive innovation skill-building venture that will bring Complexity Navigation to TeamLabs and TeamLabs to NYC.

Humantific in Denmark:

Lots of interest in Complexity Navigation as a set of future work skills. Thanks to Trine Nielsen for inviting and hosting us. Special thanks to Nikolaj Christensen for being our guide/host/collaborator. It was great fun and a lot of work. We are looking forward to Chapter 2 in Denmark in the spring.

To learn more about Humantific’s Complexity Navgation Program, Future Work Skills and Workplace Adaptability send us an email: kickitup (at) humantific (dot) com

Humantific at TeamLabs

GK VanPatter, CoFounder of HUMANTIFIC and NextDesign Leadership Network in New York will give a public talk on ReThinking Design Thinking at the experimental university campus TEAMLABS in Madrid on Wednesday February 7.

The talk will include key findings from the soon to be published book ReThinking Design Thinking. The book is a synthesis of research, commentary and visualizations undertaken over the course of several years as part of the NextD community sensemaking initiative.

The book includes the NextDesign Geographies Framework articulating the arenas of Design 1,2,3,4 as well as an overview of the challenges facing the application of design thinking methods in practice.

“Today the search for and synchronization of tools, methods and skills to increasingly complex problem scale is a quest underway in many disciplines around the world.” GK VanPatter

Coming Soon!

Long in the making and long overdue, Humantific will publish ReThinking Design Thinking / Understanding the Future That Has AlreadyArrived coming up in 2018.

Our readers will know that this community sensemaking initiative has spanned numerous years and resulted in many NextD documents, frameworks, blog posts, etc. some of which have been widely published. We decided to formally publish the synthesized key findings of this initiative in this book form that will be available on Amazon soon.

This publication combines observations on the state of design / design thinking methods and includes views into the already arriving, already operating emerging states of next generation design thinking at challenge scales beyond product, service and experience creation.

Humantific in Denmark!

At the end of the month Humantific will be in Denmark doing a series of SenseMaking for ChangeMaking events at the Danish School of Media and Journalism. There will be workshops at both the Copenhagen and Arrhus campuses of DMJX.

On January 31 there will be combined presentation, Q&A and mini-workshop open to the public in Copenhagen (geared to the business community). If you are in Copenhagen drop by and say hello!

More info from DMJX on the public event here:https://billetto.dk/e/master-class-med-humantific-for-dmjx-partnere-billetter-249207

For more information on Humantific SenseMaking and ChangeMaking workshops send us an email: kickitup (at) humantific (dot) com

MIND THE METHODOLOGY GAP

Hello again Humantific Readers. In this our last post of 2017 we are by popular request reposting our Design Thinking definitions that have previously appeared in many of our previous LinkedIn blog posts.

As the year comes to a close what we see around the subject of Design Thinking in the marketplace is alot of smoke and mirrors occurring that have confused zillions of people. The design community itself has created much of the confusion and unfotunately clarity leadership from the direction of graduate design education in particular has been less then ideal. Many have conflated Design Thinking Philosophy with Design Thinking Methodology, when in reality, one is not the other.

Humantific seems to be among only a few practices stepping up to point out that Design Thinking cannot be defined philosophically as an open aperature problem solving approach if the actual methods are assumption-based presuming/recognizing only product, service and experience challenges and outcomes. It is no secret that many diverse challenges in organizations and in societies exist that have nothing to do with creating more products, services or experiences. Any skilled methodologist can tell you that open apperture methods and assumption-based methods are two different things. They have different starting points and different outcomes.

This seems elementary but in fact is the central confusion in the marketplace presently, due in large measure to the slow methodology R&D adaptation of the graduate design schools over the course of that last decade. The spinning and selling of philsophy as methodolgy has led to a now widespread Hocus-Pocus effect around the subject of Design Thinking.

The good news is that with organizational leaders becoming more knowledgeable, more savy the Hocus-Pocus Era of Design Thinking is ending. We are optimistic that a new Methodolgy Ethics Era is dawning.

As a practice we are already embracing that era.

[PS: If you are fed up with the Hocus-Pocus Era of Design Thinking and would like to join us in the future feel free to send us an email: kickitup (at) humantific (dot) com]

10 Future Work Skills

Humantific is delighted to participate in the soon to be launched Future Work Skills Academy being organized by the talented folks at the 4th Industrial Revolution. Getting set to launch is a new virtual learning platform uniquely focused on teaching the 10 Future Work Skills identified in the study by the Institutefor the Future in California.

Those skills include:

SenseMaking

Adaptive Thinking

Transdisciplinarity

Design Mindset

Computational Thinking

Social Intelligence

Cognitive Load Management

New Media Literacy

Cross Cultrual Competency

Virtual Collaboration

Humatific CoFounder Elizabeth Pastor will be teaching the SenseMaking module in virtual classroom form, as part of the Future Work Skills Academy faculty.